• Yasser Arafat

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Yasser Arafat, Palestinian leader

Born: 24th August 1929

Birthplace: Cairo, Egypt

Died: 10th November 2004

Location of death: Paris, France

Cause of death: Cerebral Hemorrhage

Remains:Buried, The Muqata, Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine

Religion: Muslim

Race or Ethnicity: Middle Eastern

Occupation: Politician, Terrorist

Nationality: Palestine

Executive summary:Palestinian leader, former terrorist

Military service:Egyptian Army

Early Life:

  • Arafat's mother died when he was an infant, and his father sent Arafat and his brothers to be raised by an uncle in Jerusalem, then part of the British Mandate of Palestine.
  • One of his earliest memories, as Arafat said, was of British soldiers on a rampage, tearing up his uncle's house and belongings.
  • Some speculate that Arafat's estranged father was killed in battle against the Israelis in 1948.

Involvement in Politics

  • Arafat became involved with Palestinian politics as a teenager in the 1940s, fighting against the idea of Israel before Israel was re-established by U.N. edict.

  • Arafat formed terrorist group Al Fatah ("The Struggle") in 1956
  • Pro-Palestinian forces in Egypt, Syria, and Jordan started in 1964 the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) under the sponsorship of the Arab League, bringing together a number of groups all working to free Palestine for the Palestinians.
  • The Arab states favoured a more placid or peaceful policy than Fatah's, but after their defeat by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, Fatah emerged from the underground as the most powerful and best organised of the groups making up the PLO
  • Arafat became the chairman of the PLO executive committee when he took over the organisation in 1969.
  • The PLO was no longer to be something of a puppet organisation of the Arab states, wanting to keep the Palestinians quiet, but an independent nationalist organisation, based in Jordan.
  • Arafat was elected Chairman of the PLO's Executive Committee in 1969, operating it as a terrorist group through the late 1980s.

Arafat and the Oslo Peace Accords
  • In 1993 he met in secret with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Norway, culminating in the Oslo Peace Accords.

  • Palestine received a limited form of self-rule, and a promise that Israel would withdraw some settlements from disputed areas.
  • Arafat, Rabin, and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres shared the Nobel Peace Prize.
  • Arafat was elected President of the Palestinian Authority in 1996, but since that time, Israel's government has taken a hard turn to the right.
  • The region has suffered an endless spiral of authoritarian Israeli crackdowns inspiring Palestinian suicide bombings and vice versa.
Palestinian Terrorism
  • As reported by watchdog Palestinian Media Watch in 2011, both Arafat's widow Suha as well as senior Palestinian Authority leader and Fatah Central Committee member Nabil Shaath separately explained that Arafat had pre-planned the intifada and had hopes of winning international support through his use of violence.
  • Yasser Arafat was personally involved in the planning and execution of terror attacks. He encouraged them
    ideologically, authorized them financially and personally headed the Fatah Al Aqsa Brigades organization.